"I am Prometheus," I said. "Prometheus bound."

"I see," Dr. Nealy said. She was a mental-health center intake psychiatrist with big hair.

"No, you don't see," I said. "Prometheus, unbound, went up to Mount Olympus and stole fire from the gods. Before that, humans didn't have fire. Prometheus was a cool guy."

"So, do you think you have AIDS?" Nealy asked.

I decided to ignore the psychiatrist just as she had ignored me. "And did the gods reward Prometheus for his courage? No. They chained him to the side of a stone cliff. For all eternity, vultures fly at Prometheus, helplessly bound to the cliff, and eat out his liver bite by bite. What do you think of a civilization that invents such vicious myths?"

I gave up on Nealy and turned to the transportation caseworker by her side for a response. I received none.

"The first question you asked when you came in," Nealy said, "was, 'Does AIDS qualify you for Social Security disability?' Do you think you have AIDS?"

"The question is: Do I have AIDS. Can you give me just a little respect?"

"Have you had multiple sexual partners?" Nealy asked.

"No, but my husband has."

"Why don't you just tell me what happened? What brought you here?" As Nealy spoke, two more professionals entered the small office. One of them took the last empty chair. The second leaned against the wall. Now there were eight eyes, blank and expectant, focussed on me. I realized that they were waiting to be entertained, as if I were some kind of circus freak. I laughed out loud. Hadn't these professionals ever seen a bipolar before?

No one laughed with me. No one so much as cracked a smile. Their grimness, poorly disguised as concern, just made me laugh all the louder.

Nealy ignored the newcomers. "Can you tell me what happened?" she asked again, sounding a little impatient. Or maybe it was just my bipolar imagination that was dreaming up her impatience.

"OK," I said. "Two weeks ago last Friday, I went to my doctor for my annual AIDS test. We have a system. If the results are negative, which they always have been, he calls me about a week later and tells me so. If the results should ever come up positive, his secretary is to have me come in for a second blood draw." I looked up as still another professional entered the room to gawk at me.

"It's OK. Go on," Nealy said, trying to sound empathetic for the benefit of our growing audience.

"So, a week after the blood draw, I got a call from the doctor's secretary, who scheduled me for another blood draw. I didn't just assume that it was an AIDS retest; I asked the secretary what the test was for. But she didn't know. She said the doctor had just said something about my red blood cells. Maybe the AIDS virus lives in red blood cells. I wouldn't know.

"It sure looked to me as if I'd tested positive for AIDS. What do you expect a bipolar to do in a situation like that? I fell straight into the worst depressive episode I'd ever gone through."

Embarrassing tears leaked from my eyes. I never -- that's never -- let myself cry in front of others. But, in this case, I couldn't avoid either crying or being observed. Nealy handed me a box of pink facial tissues. I blew my nose, took a deep breath, and went on.

"The blood draw was three days later. I was so depressed I could hardly get out of bed, much less get to the doctor's. But I did. The doctor started getting ready to draw my blood (he always draws it himself) so casually, as if it had never occurred to him that my entire future was hanging in the balance here. I mean, he acted as if I was there for a little cold or something. So I say, 'Well?'

"'Well what?' he says.

'"Well what are you giving me another blood test for?' I say. 'Is it because I tested positive for AIDS last time?'

"'No, no. I forgot to mention it: you tested negative,' he says.

"'Then why the retest?' I ask him.

"He says, 'I just thought, judging by the last blood sample, that you might be anemic.'

"Can you believe it? That doctor is so cold he didn't bother calling me and telling me about my negative AIDS results as soon as he got them. He saved himself the trouble and waited until I came in for the anemia test, as if I couldn't care less if I was HIV positive or not."

"Did that make you angry?" Nealy said.

"Did that make me angry? Why do you think I'm sitting here putting on this freak show? That doctor swung me all the way from deep depression into a manic episode. Damn, I'm sick of dealing with stupid people."

One of the gaping observers reached her hand into the pocket of her white coat.

"For popcorn," I thought. "Popcorn would be the perfect addition to this farce."

The observer pulled a menthol candy out of her pocket and popped it into her mouth. That did it; I broke out laughing again. I wondered if she took candy to the movies too. I wondered if she ever went to the movies, what kind of movies she liked. Or maybe she didn't care what the movie was because she sat in the back row with her date and necked through the whole thing.

"Why are you laughing?" Nealy asked.

"Why aren't you laughing?" I said. "Look at you guys. If you had the faintest understanding of bipolar disorder, you wouldn't be treating me like this.

"Why do I even bother to try to explain?" I went on. "I'm Prometheus, bound to the cliff. All day long, the vultures tear little bits of my liver out of my body. But that's not the worst of it. Get this: every night, my liver (no, Prometheus's liver -- my heart) grows back. How can I adapt to the pain when, every morning, I start out with a fresh, healthy heart ready to be broken all over again?"

The other professionals left me alone with the caseworker. He read what Nealy had written in my file and finally opened his mouth.

"You're having a mixed episode," he said.

"What's a mixed episode?" I asked.

"Put simply, it's mania and depression at the same time."

"Oh," I said. But I knew that my laughter had been caused by the professionals' ludicrous behavior, not by some chemical imbalance.

"Would you like to go over to the psychiatric hospital for a rest?" the caseworker said.

That made me laugh again. There's another, more modern, myth: that you can get a rest in a psychiatric hospital. On the contrary. You're forced out of bed before you want to get up, you're forced to take your meds between meals rather than with them (which latter would decrease the resultant nausea), and you're badgered over and over, albeit by well-meaning aides. If you want to give me a rest, buy me a two-week vacation in the Bahamas.

Gods, please send me back to the days when I was just depressed -- unipolar depression. You hurt -- bad -- as you're falling into the depressed episode but then, as the episode continues, you numb out, you become apathetic, you stop caring about things. Your mind does you a big favor: it turns off the pain. These bipolar mood swings are so much worse. You keep transitioning from depression into mania and then back into depression. So you experience the horror of the descent over and over again. Is that our punishment for stealing the fire of creativity from the gods?

One day my doctor asked me, "Why do you keep coming to me with problems -- headaches, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome -- that I can't solve?"

That got me thinking. Maybe mental illness isn't a chemical imbalance that leads to illogical behaviors. Maybe it's a chemical imbalance that leads to pain. That would make my illogical behaviors my brain's way of dulling, of adapting to by explaining to itself, the pain.

When I was a kid I cried, I acted out, I blamed myself, I daydreamed; all natural reactions to the incomprehensible inner pain of mental illness. But after a while those painkillers became insufficient. My psyche then attempted to dull the pain by looking for an explanation for it. The perfect explanation was that I was a special person. People with great (special) missions tend to be misunderstood; they must endure more pain than average, missionless, people must endure. So I started to believe that the pain originated from a potential for greatness. I don't think that this belief was mental illness; I think that it was an adaptive behavior, if only because it prevented me from killing myself.

But if you are an especially great person you will be persecuted. So my delusions of greatness, of grandeur, led to paranoid delusions. Eventually, the solution to the pain became what psychiatrists call "mental illness".

But, mentally ill or not, I did not fall for the caseworker's "rest" line. I went home and continued taking my lithium -- with big meals. And I thought about the vindictive gods who bind bipolars and schizophrenics, one or two percent of the world's population, to the monstrous cliff of meaningless mood swings.

When I was through brooding, I enrolled in the rehabilitation program at my local psychiatric hospital. I met Martha, a big, sharp-eyed, woman who laughs her pain away, Len, a young blond with sad eyes who plays a guitar and sings to sublimate his pain, and Tim, a short, slender man who takes my hand, pierces my eyes with his own, and gently repeats the words of others.

"Try to make sense," Tim said to me in soft, staccato, tones. "Try to make sense."

As I took Tim's proferred hand, I could see the pain in his eyes. Tim held my hand in his for a moment, then removed his hat to show me his thinning gray hair.

"Not so good-looking," he said, throwing his words at me softly but in rapid succession.

"You're very good-looking," I said. "I like my gray hair. I think we're both good-looking."

"I'm not exactly sure what goes on," Tim said. "I forget about things nobody briefs me and pushed around so long. The ridiculous way I look I don't really expect miracles, though -- like to take you out some time. I'm 46 can take care of myself. See? See?"

"I see," I said. Tim's meekness touched my heart, but I suppose it shouldn't have; it manifested as a painfully low self-concept.

Tim wandered off. He never seemed to be going anywhere. At any given time, Tim just was where he was.

"That's what he said," Martha chided me. "Don't you ever listen?"

I had volunteered to teach creative writing at the rehab program. Len had been telling us about his son, who had been kidnapped and was "probably dead."

"Are you sure he's dead?" I had asked when Len had finished speaking.

"He said he was dead," Martha said. Unlike my other students, who called me Mam and asked permission when they so much as picked up a pencil, Martha called me Jean and made sure to keep me in line.

"He must be dead," Len said. "I hear his voice sometimes."

I couldn't argue with Len's logic.

"Our chances are slimmer," Len printed on the ruled pad I gave him. "That's little kids' lives or somebody else just as good. All I knew is it's God, or maybe it's a different devil. Still a devil."

Then Len disappeared. Week by week, students came and went; they were free to attend my writing class whenever and for as long as they wished.

Once in a while, Tim would come in and scrawl a few lines. He would give the paper to me as if it were a precious gift -- which it was -- then wander back out. I would take Tim's paper home and type it up, switching the words around and adding the appropriate conjunctions to make his essay as comprehensible as possible. To reciprocate the gift, I would draw a colored-flower border around the typed words. I would give the paper back to Tim the next time I saw him. Tim would read the paper out loud to anyone who happened to be present. (This behavior apparently was, or had been, expected of him in some other class.) Then he would fold the paper up, put it into his pocket, and wander off. Never would he sit in my class for the entire hour.

I liked volunteering at the program so much that I swung back into a manic phase. One day I was so excited at the prospect of teaching the class that I ran through the garage toward my parked car and slipped on a patch of leaked oil. Like an idiot, I used my right arm to break the fall. I felt a sharp pain in my right wrist, but it faded quickly. Thinking that I had a slight sprain, I admitted myself to the nearest hospital. When I took off my coat, I saw bone protruding from my skin. The pain immediately returned.

This hospital had adopted the policy of giving painkillers through the patient's IV tube rather than by direct injection. This meant that I was given no painkillers until after I had stopped at the billing desk, gotten my arm x-rayed, and then gotten settled in the orthopedist's cubicle where the IV could be set up.

By that time, the pain was so intense that, consciously, I was moaning and, unconsciously, the stress had constricted the blood vessels in my arms to the point where they were invisible and impalpable. The phlebotomist assigned to insert my IV tube could not find a vein to insert it into. As the orthopedist wrenched my right arm back into place -- ouch! -- the phlebotomist jabbed at my left arm over and over with her needle -- double ouch! -- totally in vain.

"Stop it," I screamed at the young nurse, who couldn't have been a week out of phlebotomy training. "Find a phlebotomist who knows what they're doing!"

"I can do it," she insisted, and she came toward me once again with the horrid needle.

"No!" I shouted. But the phlebotomist lifted the needle once again.

She was attacking me, trying to hurt me to no good end and without my consent. I defended myself with the only effective weapon I had. I raised my left leg to push her away before she could jab at me again. I had to raise it fast because she was coming at me fast, so she may have perceived my action as a kick. That would explain why she burst into tears and ran out of the room, making me feel like a real scumbag.

"I wasn't kicking you, Miss," I wanted to say. "I was kicking the envious gods who have me chained to this bipolar rock." But I couldn't say it to her; she was long gone.

Another phlebotomist came in and inserted the IV into the back of my hand -- triple ouch! Finally the pain ended. In fact, I fell asleep.

A day or two later, I returned to the hospital, my arm in a cast that weighed more than my entire upper body. I happened to pass the ER nurse who had assisted my orthopedist. She broke out laughing the instant she recognized me.

"You were so funny!" she said. I begged her for more information about what I had said, but she had work to do. The intense pain apparently had made me even more manic than I already was. When both manic and under the influence of morphine, I must babble. I guess that I'm a funny manic, just as I'm a funny drunk.

Back to the broken arm incident: my next-door neighbor, Simone, was kind enough to take me home and care for me that evening. That's when Simone and I became friends. As my arm healed, Simone and I ate pizza and Chinese take-out and Russell Stover chocolates from the box with the brown ribbon. We shared war stories and love stories with the same relish.

But Simone expects more from a friendship than Tim, Len, and Martha do. Friendly conversation is not enough; Simone expects me to reveal to her my deepest secrets. Friendly smiles are not enough; Simone expects warm "hello" and "goodbye" hugs. She keeps telling me how funny and how generous I am. She even says that she loves me; this makes me feel a little uncomfortable.

It's about taking risks, isn't it?

One day Simone revealed a particularly deep secret to me, and so I tried to reciprocate.

"I don't need friends any more," I told her. "I'm tired of being hurt. I'd rather be alone than let anybody get too close." It's true. If I let myself love someone, I become sensitized to him or her, and one mean crack can leave me manic for weeks.

I think that that information was a little too much for Simone. Her face, her whole body, seemed to close up tight.

"You're too cold," she said softly.

I wished that I could have explained to her about us consumers, about how we have been hurt so many times (by others and by our own paranoid delusions) and about how intimacy has become very risky for us.

"This life sucks," Len said to me. "Life is so good for most people. They're talented, smart, wise. I don't work. I have no drive. No strength at all."

Yes, you do have strengths, Len.

I am going to take the risk of giving Len, Martha, Tim, and all consumers, a voice. I have invested every dollar I have saved (and then some) and started the Any Dream Will Do Review. I have been given the implicit mandate to do this by those who cannot yet speak for themselves.

And I will apologize to Simone. We will share a long, warm hug.

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